


Point Blank

by comeonlight



Category: Final Fantasy Type-0
Genre: Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Death, Edgy Fic of Yikes, Gen, I'm Sorry, Introspection, Pain, Past Sexual Assault, Suicide, Talking to ghosts? Hallucinations?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 12:28:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18366026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comeonlight/pseuds/comeonlight
Summary: There's a blank period between a person's death and the spiral's reset. In that time before being pulled back to do it all over again, the inhabitants of Orience may face their demons. 600,104,972 times.





	Point Blank

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure what's considered "graphic portrayal" but TW for some gore, heavily implied sexual abuse, and suicide.

Every time Emina dies, she comes face to face with a manifestation of something she can usually describe with a single word. A prominent feeling or thought, a regret etched into the corners of her mind, something that might linger or something that consumes her entire being. The first is unlike the rest. The first death is not from a bullet to the head or water in her lungs. The first time she dies, she is small and quick, clinging to instinct because she has no memory. Her first death is the smell of smoke and the sound of wailing children. It's dizziness and dry coughs. It's a rain of gunfire against a man once known as her brother. And it's gone in seconds, leaving only the hazy images of rubble and bodies. She escapes, but at far too great a price.

The second death is simple and quick. She has no final statements. She takes a last look at the stone-faced executioner, his gun at the ready, unwavering. Someone behind her chair ties the blindfold. She sits in darkness and silence, waiting. And then it's done.

When Emina opens her eyes she's nowhere, some blank space between life and death maybe, or between heaven and hell if ever she's done something to avoid the latter. She sees the executioner, his gun now over his shoulder and facing away. He speaks with a monotony befitting of his neutral facial expression. “You're relieved.” And she is. The lifelong panic stirring violently inside her, so constant that it felt completely and utterly normal, like it would be wrong to _not_ feel that way – it's gone. She is calm. The weight on her shoulders has been lifted in death and she is free. As soon as she thinks it, she presses her lips into a bitter smile, vacantly staring out past the executioner into the unending white.

“I guess I am.”

The third time Emina dies, she sees Cid. Prisoner. That must be what he represents. Crystals enslave humanity, and Cid – no, not even Cid – _fate_ enslaves her. There is no escape, not even in death. Cid paces, hands behind his back, the wrinkles on his face becoming more pronounced as he looks at Emina. No, he's looking _into_ her. His eyes pierce through every facade she's ever worn and peer right into her core. “A bird in a cage,” he says. “Free to observe the world beyond, to dream of flight into the unknown, but caged nonetheless.” Emina’s nostrils flare. Her eyes, heavy and damp with pure annoyance, flicker up to Cid’s face. “Says the one who clipped my wings.”

The fourth time Emina dies, she sees Kurasame, somber and bloody and small, clenching a mantle dyed red. “Regret,” she says before he can. He sinks to his knees, hunching over, quiet sobs shaking his body. His bares his teeth, splitting open the scabs over the burns on his face and drops of crimson paint the white space. It pools under him, growing into an ocean that touches the sky and seeps into it, consuming every last speck of the emptiness until it’s heavy, unbearably saturated with the blood of nameless pawns. Kurasame himself is now red, skin hot and blood leaking from his mouth, his eyes, his nose, from scraped knuckles and wounds covered by his soaked, tattered uniform. It seems like the color will swallow all of existence when Kurasame looks up, bloodshot eyes fully dilated. “Help–”

The spiral resets.

The fifth time Emina dies, she heaves water. Salt stings her nose and she's dizzy, can't hear quite right, and above all _frigid._ She’d cast herself out to sea this time, forced herself against each push of the waves and swam into every breath the ocean drew until she herself could no longer take in the seabreeze. Now she sees a woman: blonde, assured, attractive, _familiar,_ donning the same commanding officer's standard uniform she'd been issued. Emina stares a minute, letting the memories come back to her. She mouths the woman's name a few times, sporadically hacking up water as she goes through the motions until it feels _right._ Of course. This woman was someone in a situation like her own, in a way. The largest difference being, of course, she had a choice. “Urushi. Why are you here?”

“You drowned in your guilt,” Urushi says. Her voice is smooth, compassionate even. “And you just keep sinking deeper and deeper.” Emina lowers her head, staring thoughtfully into the white abyss beneath her feet. It ripples like water with every word spoken, every droplet fallen from her chin. “There's no way out, is there?” she asks. Urushi turns her head, brow lowered and teeth gently biting the inside of her lip. She lets out a quiet sigh that echoes in Emina's ears like the rush of water.

The sixth time Emina dies, it's another bullet to the head. She sees Celestia, the gracious woman from Concordia. She can't guess what words this phantom has for her, so she stands still, silently, waiting. Celestia offers a smile, very slight but sincere from the looks of it. “The love for your home. That is what I represent.” Emina opens her mouth and then clams it shut. Rubrum is her home, treason personified though she may be. She loves her home, dearly. And her heart aches all the more because of it.

The seventh death is a fluke. A mistake in the field, too many monsters and no magic, claws tearing her skin apart and fangs scraping the meat off her bones. Helpless kicks and jabs as her joints are ripped out of place, hot, smelly breath and drool in her face. Then it’s all white. She touches her face, her elbows, her stomach, her legs. She’s back together, good as new save for her pulse still banging loud in her ears and the heightened alertness. And then she sees a man. He’s tall with black hair, a trimmed mustache sitting on his upper lip while just a tuft of hair sticks out from his chin. A white uniform with dull gold trim hugs his body, proudly displaying the symbol of the Empire on both sleeves. He wears an unfastened belt with an ugly little tiger drawn on it with permanent marker and there’s just something _off_ about him, Emina thinks, taking an unconscious step back. The man gives a toothy smile, and at the glint of his eyes she remembers. She remembers it all.

Her skin is on fire. She can feel fat fingers and sweaty palms on her, everywhere, the putrid smell of cologne filling her nostrils, nauseating. “Just do as I say,” the man says softly, and she feels it – rage, hot as the sun, as painful as her boiling skin. She feels the pressure on her, forcing her down and she kneels, raising her shaky arms above her head as bruises and welts appear all over her body, stinging like the wounds are fresh. “Now don’t hide that pretty face.”

 _Kill._ The absolute fear mingles with the endless disgust and malice broiling just beneath the surface. _Kill._ She hears breathing, ringing in her ears, chilling her bones. She feels the vomit in her throat, burning. “Get away,” she spits, and clear liquid spurts out. Her self-preservation instincts and all the _anger_ tell her to kill, drive a blade into the man’s chest and she so desperately craves to do so, to make him bleed out and make herself forget. His breaths are incessant, only growing louder. “Get away, get **away** from me.” She clenches her fists, starts to yell incoherencies just to drown the noise out. _Kill._ And the vomit comes again. It feels like her heart is what’s pouring out of her mouth as she suddenly leaps up, hand outstretched toward the katana at his side. _Kill._

“Impotency,” the man says flatly, and the spiral whirls anew.

The eighth time Emina dies, she sees Kazusa. Hands in his coat pockets, wearing that indecipherable smile of his. “Anxiety.” He takes a seat, as if there’s some invisible chair in the nothingness. Maybe there is. “Well, it _is_ only natural to worry when the slip of a mad scientist’s tongue could seal your fate. Or, more accurately, it could accelerate the inevitable.” She forces a stoic expression, but his eyes bore right into her. It hurts. The mark on her back stings beneath her shirt. “Are you afraid of me, Emina?”

Emina brushes her bangs out of her face along with the hardly existent dampness on her forehead. “I have no reason to fear a figment conjured up by the poison in my mind.” Kazusa hums, nodding, seemingly satisfied with the answer. Then he stands. “Your mind or your soul?” Reset.

The ninth death brings an image Emina had never seen in the flesh or even in artworks. But the woman before her, tall and slender and almost frail-looking, elegant in her battle gown reminiscent of the Vermilion Bird – this is most certainly Lady Caetuna. Her eyes tell all. “Solitude,” Emina says into the blank space. “Imprisonment. Misery.” The words flow into her mind and out of her mouth. “Desolation, madness, despair. Resignation.” And she feels those words in her chest, seething. She knows these sentiments, knows them far better than she’d like and she watches Lady Caetuna’s unwavering stare, wondering how eyes so beautiful could ever hide so much pain for so, so long.

The tenth time Emina dies, she sees Ace. The boy from Class Zero. Kurasame’s class. He sits cross-legged on...the ground? Well, she must me standing on something, Emina supposes, even if she can't see it. She decides to sit too, cross-legged, across from the pensive-looking Ace, his lips just slightly parted in thought. “Who do you trust?” he asks, looking out somewhere far and away, almost as if he's daydreaming. Emina follows his gaze, as if staring into nothingness will provide her with some sort of enlightenment. She doesn't know. She doesn't know who she trusts, who she _should_ trust. She's almost certain that she _distrusts_ herself. “I don't know.” Ace turns his gaze to her, and smiles.

The eleventh time Emina dies, it's a dagger through her heart. She clutches her chest as she stumbles into the white space. Waiting for her is Morse. This is an inevitability, she thinks, neutral about his appearance in her “space” – her soul? Her dream within stasis? Whatever it is, Morse is here, and she can't cast him out. Not that she exactly wants to. The bond between the two of them is undefined and strange, but it's there. He is a weak man, clinging to the pieces of himself he sees in her, holding onto a feeble sense of camaraderie. But, Emina reflects, she is a weak woman. A “disposable hero,” as Morse had once said. Just another pawn of the Empire, that just happens to have enough rebellion stirring in her heart to go against absent orders despite the increased risk to herself. She'd risk everything for those she holds dear, eagerly. It'll never be enough for redemption, not in her eyes and not in those of Rubrum.

“Enough of that crap,” Morse says. He unsheathes one of his swords and gestures to her with the blade, the polished metal glimmering as it slices through the inexistent air. “You're not weak. You just want to belong.” His characteristic smirk is gone and his eyes are dull, soft even. Tired. “And what's wrong with that?”

The twelfth time Emina dies, she’s trapped in her magitek armor, sent up in flames by none other than the infamous Red Demons and leaving no trace of herself; only the molten metal corpse of a machine made for killing. When she returns to white, she sees a boy in a cloak, with brown hair and glasses. “Does it hurt?” he asks.

Of course it hurts. To die over and over again, with all the memories of past spirals rushing back for this brief instance, only to be torn away again as she's thrust back to the beginning. It hurts like hell. It burns like the fire that had just consumed her. “So much.” Oh, what she'd give to just stop existing, make it all just _stop._

“Emina,” the boy says. Emina bites back a distressed _“What?”_ and studies his face. She's seen him before, she's almost certain. “Do I...know you?” And he smiles. What could he possibly have to smile about? “Hardly,” the boy says. “But that hurt, Emina? That's what makes you human. I can't say when it'll end, if ever. But hold onto that pain.”

Now Emina can't help but laugh. Just suffer, forever? “Ha! I get it.” She lets herself fall backward, slowly sinking beneath the “floor” into the endless space. “I understand now,” she says, watching the boy fly toward her. Very interesting how he can navigate the space here. What a peculiar boy, who speaks in a way that tells he knows so much more. Maybe he's real, something greater than a mere human chained into this hideous cycle. And then there's Emina, who understands so little but has realized one singular fact for certain: Orience is hell.

The thirteenth time Emina dies, it's back to bullets. A clean, quick bullet to the head. And in the blank space, she finds herself before a faceless man. He motions to himself, then to her, frantically. She should know him. She knows that she should know him. But she doesn't. He pleads with her in silence, reaching for her shoulders, gripping them firmly but not aggressively – careful, so careful. Scared. Terrified of disappearing. It scares her too.

She hugs him close. He's important. She knows that much. She doesn't know him, but he's important and she won't let him go. She'll hold him there, forever if she has to, repair the tired and rusted chain linking their souls by her own hand, whatever it takes. She calls the memories with all her heart, silently begs the abyss to bring back just a fragment of the past, just one image. Her prayer goes unanswered.

And then there are gunshots. The frightened man cradled against her bosom pushes himself away. He stands tall, turns his back and for one sliver of an instant, Emina thinks she remembers. And then he's dead, and that tiny hope is gone. His body is perforated with bullet holes and she is unscathed. And she cries. She cries for the man with no face who shielded her without hesitation, and she vows that one day, she will remember everything about him. But that is not her choice to make.

The fourteenth time she dies, there's darkness. A foul, murky darkness with swirls of shattered sunsets singed into the fabric of existence. And there's noise, oh so much noise, a cacophony of cries for help, for the pain to stop. She tastes the blood of a million men and smells their corpses burning. She sees each and every one of their horrified faces, their fears trickling into crevices of her soul and for the first time, she thinks that _yes, this is where she belongs._

The fifteenth time Emina dies, she sees white again. Her head still aches from the gunshot. She sees Kurasame again, in his commanding officer uniform and his mask. “Where does your allegiance lie?” he asks, his voice stern, interrogating her. His eyes are weary, surrounded by bags and defined lines. Emina half expects him to draw his sword. He doesn't, though. He just looks at her, tired, disappointed, waiting for an answer. Emina lowers her gaze to his feet. It's hard to look at him right now. “I really don't know.” Reset.

She starts to see the same faces in the following deaths, with no pattern she can discern. More often than all the others, she sees Kurasame and Kazusa, sometimes together. A few rarities appear as well, one in a hundred, one in a million, one in ten million. The Chancellor, a child she doesn't know, the l'Cie Qun'mi, a dragon, a woman from Lorica, Guren, a legionary, a girl with silver hair and purple eyes insisting that Orience will someday be set free of the spiral. She loses count of how many times she dies, how many different faces she sees in the gaps between spirals spinning anew, loses all hope of it ever ending, grows dull and indifferent to Orience’s eternal torment.

The six hundred million, one hundred four thousand, nine hundred seventy-third time Emina dies, she sees Doctor Arecia. Even in a place with no floor and no air, her heels clack and the smoke from her cigarette drifts. “It's over,” she says, and the never-ending white dims. It dims and it fades into darkness. This darkness, however, is different from the darkness that's plagued Emina since the very beginning. It's empty like a blank canvas, a fresh start. In this darkness, tiny particles of light begin to shimmer, like stars. “You'll go with them, won't you?” Arecia asks. Emina closes her eyes, a tiny spark of hope igniting in the depths of her skepticism. Her body crumbles and falls away like dust, leaving her bare soul, bright and so horribly damaged like the rest. And she goes. She goes through the Gate, leaving Orience behind for good, and she finally feels it: _peace._ It's over.


End file.
